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Harriet Hanson Robinson
| birth_place = Boston, Massachusetts | death_date = December | death_place = Malden, Massachusetts | nationality = United States | other_names = | known_for = Loom and Spindle: Life Among the Early Mill Girls | occupation = Author }} Harriet Jane Hanson Robinson (February 8, 1825 – December 22, 1911), who worked as a bobbin doffer in a Massachusetts cotton mill as a child, was involved in a worker's strike, became an American poet and prose author, and played an important role in the women's suffrage movement in the United States. Life Early childhood She was born Harriet Jane Hanson, the daughter of Harriet (Browne) and William Hanson, a carpenter. Both parents were descended from early English settlers, but without distinguished ancestors. Her elder brother was John Wesley Hanson (1823–1901), }} and she had two surviving younger brothers, Benjamin and William. Harriet's father died when she was six, leaving his widow to support four young children. Her mother was determined to keep her family together, despite the difficulty in doing so. Harriet later recalled, in her autobiography Loom and Spindle , her mother's response when a neighbour offered to adopt Harriet so that her mother had one less mouth to feed: "No; while I have one meal of victuals a day, I will not part with my children." She later wrote that her mother's words on that occasion stuck with her "because of the word 'victuals whose meaning she wondered about for a long time thereafter. Initially, Mrs. Hanson ran a small store in Boston, Massachusetts, which sold food, candy, and firewood. The family lived in the back room of the shop, all sharing one bed "two at the foot and three at the head" as Harriet was later to recall. At the invitation of Harriet's maternal aunt, Angeline Cudworth, also a widow, the family moved to Lowell, Massachusetts, a center of the textile industry. Lowell was a planned factory town. Under the Lowell System, the company recruited young farm girls to work in the mills, building dormitories where they could live at low rents, and hiring matrons to monitor the social conduct of the girls. The company arranged for cultural events, bible studies and other educational opportunities. However, working conditions were often poor and unsafe and wages low, leading to a strike in 1834. Mrs. Hanson obtained a job running a boarding house for a textile mill company in Lowell. Mill worker in the early 1800s]] At the age of ten, Harriet started to work in the Lowell mills. By her own account, she wanted to work so she could earn money for herself, and the experience was good for her. However, there may have been an element of necessity since her mother earned little money from running the boarding house. Her job, which paid $2 per week, was as a "doffer", replacing full bobbins with empty ones. The job took only a quarter of each hour, and during the free periods the children could play or read or even go home for a while. In 1836, the Lowell Mill Girls organized their second strike, or "turn out" as they called them. The first strike had been in 1834 over a 15% cut in wages. This second strike was over an increase in board charges that was equivalent to a 12.5% cut in wages. To Harriet, aged eleven, it was her first strike. In her autobiography, she recounted it with pride: Bushman comments that, through her linking the incident, in her autobiography, to the cause of women's suffrage that she didn't actually take up until much older, Harriet effectively wrote herself a place in history, where she has become credited as an pioneer and leader at an early age in the women's suffage movement. However, Harriet's room was just one of over 200 such mill rooms — there being nearly two thousand strikers in all — in many of which girls and women who would have taken similar action in the face of indecisiveness; and, even by Harriet's own account, this act of "childish bravado" was all that she did of note in a month-long strike. }}}} boardinghouse and storehouse, Lowell]] Harriet was harming her own mother by striking, since her mother would have benefited from the increase in boarding charges. Harriet was not to realize this until she was older. As a consequence of the strike, several of the mills reversed the increase in charges, and the boarding system was reviewed, on the grounds that — it being the principal inducement for young women and girls to come and work at the mills in the first place — if they were so dissatisfied with it as to strike then it was not having its desired effect. But the strike leaders were fired from their jobs, as was Harriet's mother, which Harriet depicted in her autobiography as an act of petty revenge for Harriet's own actions. Harriet continued to work in the mills after the strike was over, graduating to tending a spinning frame and then becoming a "drawing-in girl", one of the better jobs in the mill. The drawing room was relatively quiet, away from the spinning and weaving machinery. The drawing-in girl took over after the warp threads had been wound onto the take-up beam, and drew each thread through the harness and reeds using a long metal hook. She could sit on a stool or a chair as she worked. Once this was complete, the beam would be delivered to the weaving room. The pay was on a piecework basis, so Harriet could work at her own pace, and during periods when the looms were operating could find a quiet room away from the machinery where she could read. Education Harriet obtained an elementary education before starting work in the mill. While working as a doffer, she also attended evening classes. At the age of fifteen she left the mills for two years to study French, Latin and English grammar and composition at Lowell High School, studying in a wooden school room in a building that had a butcher's shop on the ground floor. The titles of two of her compositions have survived: "Poverty Not Disgraceful" and "Indolence and Industry", reflecting her opinion that there was nothing wrong with the honest labor of poor people. Harriet returned to the mills, working there until 1848, but in her spare time participated in literary groups in Lowell. Lowell was rich in educational and cultural opportunities for women at that time. There were libraries and bookstores, evening schools and lectures, concerts and balls. Two of the first magazines written by women were published in the town, the Lowell Offering and The New England Offering. Betsey Guppy Chamberlain (1797–1886), one of Harriet's companions in the mills, became a noted contributor of sketches and stories to the Lowell Offering. Harriet said that "the fame of The Lowell Offering caused the mill girls to be considered very desirable for wives; and that young men came from near and far to pick and choose for themselves, and generally with good success." Harriet also wrote and published poetry, and it was through this that she met her future husband William Robinson, who was working as an editor at the Lowell Journal, which published some of her work. Marriage Harriet married William Stevens Robinson (1818–1876) on Thanksgiving Day of 1848, when she was twenty-three. Also from a poor background, Robinson was a writer for a newspaper and a supporter of the Free Soil Party, which opposed the expansion of slavery into the western territories. This made it hard for him to keep a job. During the early years of her marriage, Harriet was not interested in women's rights. In her early writings she described the pleasure of having a husband to handle worldly problems, while her job was to take care of him, and said that for this reason she did not want to vote. Harriet later adopted the women's rights cause after her husband had taken it up. The couple were to have four children, one of whom died young, and also looked after Harriet's mother. Often they struggled to make ends meet. In 1858 the couple moved to Malden, Massachusetts, a new residential suburb five miles from Boston, buying a house two blocks from the railway station. This was to be Harriet's home for the rest of her life. At first, William Robinson struggled to earn a living as a journalist. They had a large garden where they grew fruit and vegetables, and made some money by raising chickens and selling the eggs. After the Civil War, for eleven years from 1862 he held a well-paying job as clerk of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. In 1868 Harriet Robinson joined the American Woman's Suffrage Organization led by Lucy Stone, and founded the Malden women's club. William Robinson was forced out of his job by the politician Benjamin Butler, and in 1876 died after a long illness. Later years As a widow, Harriet Robinson rented out rooms to support herself, her three daughters and her aged mother. She wrote several books, including a biography of her husband, and became increasingly active in the women's suffrage movement. Her book Loom and Spindle (1898) portrayed the industrial town of Lowell in her childhood and youth as a time of great opportunity for mill girls, who learned the discipline of labor and gained broader ideas about the world from their experiences. The book continues to be read more than one hundred years after it was published. Robinson and her daughter Harriet Lucy Robinson Shattuck organized the National Woman Suffrage Association of Massachusetts, associated with Susan B. Anthony's organization. They helped Julia Ward Howe to organize the New England Women's Club. Harriet Robinson corresponded extensively with the suffrage movement leaders Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. When the National Woman Suffrage Association opened on 26 May 1881 at the Tremont Temple in Boston, Harriet Robinson welcomed the delegates and guests. At this session she offered the following resolution: "Whereas, We believe that it is not safe to trust the great question of woman's political rights solely to the legislature, or to the voters of the state, therefore Resolved, That it is the duty of the women of Massachusetts to organize an active work, to secure a sixteenth amendment to the United States Constitution." Harriet Robinson wrote enthusiastically in 1881, }} Harriet never took a theoretical position on women's rights, and may have been largely motivated by an ambition to advance in society, which the movement offered. However, she became a formidable advocate of suffrage in her writings and as a public speaker. The poet Lucy Larcom, a friend of Harriet who had also worked in the mills as a child, wrote of her, "Mrs. Robinson is deeply interested in all the movements, which tend to the advancement of women, and uses her pen and her voice freely in their behalf. She was the first woman to speak before the Select Committee on Woman Suffrage in Congress, and has spoken for the cause before the legislature of her own State, where she is not only a citizen, but a vote as far as the law allows." Harriet lived to the age of eighty-six, dying at home in Malden on 22 December 1911. Footnotes Publications Although she published several book, Harriet Robinson did not make money from her writings, which she published at her own expense. Plays *''Captain Mary Miller: A drama. Boston: W.H. Baker, 1887. *The New Pandora: A drama'' (verse drama). New York & London: Putman, 1889. Non-fiction *''Massachusetts in the Woman Suffrage Movement: A general; political, legal and legislative history from 1774 to 1881. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1881. *''Early Factory Labor in New England (with Carol Davidson Wright). Boston: Wright& Potter, 1883. *''Loom and Spindle; or, Life among the early mill girls. New York: T.Y. Crowell, 1898. **revised edition, Kailua, HI: Press Pacifica, 1976. **Carlisle, MA: Applewood, 2011. Edited *William Robinson, ''"Warrington" pen-portraits: a collection of personal and political reminiscences from 1848 to 1876. Boston: Lee & Shepard, 1877. Anthologized *''Women and the National Experience: Primary sources in American history'' (edited by Ellen Skinner). New York: Longman, 2003. *''American Working-Class Literature: An anthology'' (edited by Nicholas Coles & Janet Zundy). New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. Except where note, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.Search results: Harriet Hanson Robinson, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Mar. 15, 2014. See also *List of U.S. poets References * * * * * * * * * * * ;Notes Further reading * * * * External links ;About *Harriet Jane Hanson Robinson in the Encyclopædia Britannica *Harriet Hanson Robinson in the Gale Encyclopedia of Biography *Modern History Sourcebook: Harriet Robinson at Fordham University Category:1825 births Category:1911 deaths Category:People from Boston, Massachusetts Category:Writers from Boston, Massachusetts Category:American suffragists Category:Textile workers